Castlereagh

“ The policy of Castlereagh made as strong a contrast with the policy of Canning as even the contrast which was brought under the notice of every listener by the Parliamentary speeches of the two men. Canning was master of a polished eloquence which, at the time, had no rival in either House of Parliament. Castlereagh was one of the most singular and striking illustrations of the fact that a man may sometimes become a power in the House of Commons without the slightest gift of eloquence. Canning was a master of phrase, tone, and gesture. ”

“ Peter Finnerty received the judgment of the Court of King's Bench, for a libel upon Lord Castlereagh. There never was a man who stood upon the floor of the Court for judgment who made a more able or a more brave defence than he did; he did not retract one sentence, one syllable of the original publication, but, on the contrary, he produced affidavits to prove the truth of every word that he had published about Lord Castlereagh's cruelty to the people of Ireland, when he was in power, at the Castle of Dublin. ”

“ He had accepted the governor-generalship of India, which would have implied his retirement from public life at home, and refused to remain unless he was promised “the whole inheritance” of Castlereagh,—the foreign office and the leadership of the House of Commons. His terms were accepted, and he took office in September 1822. He held the office from that date till April 1827, when he became prime minister in succession to Lord Liverpool, whose health had broken down. Even before this he was the real director of the policy of the cabinet—as Castlereagh had been from 1812 to 1822. ”

“ But he succeeded in obtaining, towards the close of his stay, some slight remission of the severe restrictions placed by England upon our trade with her West Indian colonies. His relations with a cabinet in which the principles of Castlereagh and Canning predominated could hardly be cordial, yet he seems to have been treated with perfect civility. Indeed, he was not a man whom it was easy even for an Englishman to insult. He remarks of Castlereagh, after one of his first interviews with that nobleman: "His deportment is sufficiently graceful, and his person is handsome. ”

“ Like most men who cultivate mere cunning, he underrated all who do not place the greatest reliance upon it, and in this way conceived a very depreciating estimate of Lord Castlereagh's ability. Knowing how deeply he had himself been trusted, and how much employed in state transactions, he speculated on a long career of political influence, and that, while his Lordship remained as Secretary, his own skill and dexterity would never be dispensed with. ”

“ The vessel of the state in these sudden squalls requires that those at the helm should govern it with a calm heart and a steady hand. Anger and fear are equally to be avoided, for they lead equally to violent measures, and the excitement of one party only feeds the excitement of the other.
Lord Castlereagh, the leading spirit at this time in the Cabinet, vapid and incorrect as an orator, inefficient as an administrator, was still, as I have elsewhere said, not without qualities as a statesman—for he was cool and he was courageous ”

“ Ld. Castlereagh, though labouring under many heavy charges for his conduct towards the Irish Catholics, has still maintained a sort of integrity of reputation for private honour; he also has the advantage of being a person whom the Prince would prefer if any junction were to be made with new men, and his ambition is of a limited nature, as he would confine himself to his department and only promote persons either from goodwill towards them, or for the general advantage of the Administration to which he belonged. ”

“ Not even in the worst days of Lord Castlereagh's ill-omened regime was such an attempt as this made to degrade the green of Ireland into a party colour, and to make that which has long been regarded as a national emblem the symbol of a faction. Gentlemen, there is no right-minded or right-hearted man—looking back upon the ruinous dissensions and bitter conflicts which have been the curse and bane of this country—who will not reprobate any effort to revive and perpetuate them. ”

“ Chatham gloried in being a merchant; Lord Castlereagh, to the serious injury of his nation, has indulged himself in the satisfaction of acting the fine gentleman; he has sacrificed his country to fraternise with the great people of the continent, and from that moment has united in his person the vices of the saloon with the cupidity of the counting-house; the duplicity and obsequiousness of the courtier with the haughtiness and insolence of the upstart. The poor English constitution is in imminent danger. ”

“ And leaves a track of snowy fleece from brisket to the nose;
It's lovely how they peel it off with never stop nor stay,
They're racing for the ringer's place this year at Castlereagh.
The man that keeps the cutters sharp is growling in his cage,
He's always in a hurry ”

“ England alone was capable of reconciling all their wishes, and restoring to the various forces the unity which, like the bundle of sticks in the fable, rendered them invincible when united, though each separately would be easily overcome.
Lord Castlereagh arrived on the Continent to confer with Lord Aberdeen, Lord Cathcart, and his own brother Sir Charles Stewart; and from this time the influence of the British legation was complete and paramount. ”

“ When Heffernan, with his charge, Forester, reached Dublin, he drove straight to Castlereagh's house, affectedly to place the young man under the protection of his distinguished relative, but in reality burning with eager impatience to recount his last stroke of address, and to display the cunning artifice by which he had embroiled O'Reilly with the great popular leader. ”

“ Recalled to England in 1818, he was selected to accompany Lord Castlereagh to the meeting of the allied sovereigns and their ministers at Aix-la-Chapelle, when the treaty arrangements of 1815, particularly those regarding the continuance of the military occupation of France, were modified, and the allied armies withdrawn. In 1821, when Castlereagh attended George IV on a visit to Hanover, he was accompanied by Parish. In 1823 the government determined to send out political agents to the Spanish American States, and Parish was appointed commissioner and consul-general to Buenos Ayres. ”

“ Castlereagh’s conviction was that, in presence of threatened invasion and rebellion, Ireland could only be made safe by union with Great Britain. In Lord Camden, as afterwards in Lord Cornwallis, Castlereagh found a congenial chief; though his favour with these statesmen was jealously viewed both by the Irish oligarchy and by the English politicians who wished to keep the machine of Irish administration in their own hands. Pitt himself was doubtful of the expediency of making an Irishman chief secretary, but his view was changed by the influence of Cornwallis. ”

“ Few men have taken part in so many important events as did Lord Castlereagh in the quarter of a century that covers his public career; few men have been the victims of such constant and intense unpopularity. ”

“ He commits dulness with greater vivacity, and flounders more briskly in an argument. He has enhanced the loose dangling slip-shod manner which so well accords with his person and understanding, into something positive and dogmatical; and is even grown tenacious of the immaculateness of his maiden treaty, which he will not have so much as suspected: In this alteration of tone we think him wrong. We have always looked upon Lord Castlereagh as an excellent taffeta lining to a court dress; but he should leave the buckram of office to his friend the secretary of the Admiralty. ”

“ Why does England refuse to avail herself of the glory and advantage she might derive from this course of proceeding? Every thing passes away in England as well as elsewhere. Castlereagh’s administration will pass away, and that which may succeed it, and which is doomed to inherit the fruit of so many errors, may become great by only discontinuing the system that has hitherto been pursued. He who may happen to be placed at the head of the English cabinet, has merely to allow things to take their course, and to obey the winds that blow. ”

“ It was the preparation of a scheme for the union of Great Britain and Ireland, to be followed by a measure of Roman catholic emancipation, which led to the resignation of Pelham, who was hostile to any further concession. Castlereagh's views made him a suitable person to forward the government's policy, and, in spite of the rule that the chief secretary should not be an Irishman, Pitt, on his own knowledge of Castlereagh's talent and recent services, as well as upon Lord Cornwallis's recommendation, made him Pelham's successor. ”

“ His words gave strength to the hopes of "Catholic emancipation," as the removal of what remained of the civil disabilities of Catholics was called, which were held out by his agent, Lord Castlereagh, in Ireland itself as a means of hindering any opposition to the project of Union on the part of the Catholics. It was agreed on all sides that their opposition would have secured its defeat; and the absence of such a Catholic opposition showed the new trust in Pitt which was awakened by the hints of Lord Castlereagh. The trust had good grounds to go on. ”

“ On the 8th of June Sir Hew received a dispatch from Lord Castlereagh, informing him that the British Government had determined to send ten thousand men immediately to the assistance of the Spanish patriots. But this was preceded four days by a proclamation which had outstripped Lord Castlereagh's dispatch, stating that his Majesty had ordered all hostilities towards Spain to cease, and all Spanish ships at sea to be unmolested. Admiral Collingwood took the command of the whole British fleet on the coast of Spain, ready to co-operate. ”

“ That it appears to the House, from the evidence on the table, that lord viscount Castlereagh, in the year 1805, shortly after he had quitted the situation of President of the Board of Control, and being a Privy Councillor and Secretary of State, did place at the disposal of lord Clancarty, a member of the same board, the nomination to a writership, in order to facilitate his procuring a seat in Parliament. ”

“ On the 6th of October Sir John Moore received instructions from Lord Castlereagh that his army was to advance into Spain, and co-operate with the Spanish armies for the expulsion of the French. He was informed that his twenty-five thousand men would receive a reinforcement of ten thousand men under Sir David Baird, who was on his voyage to Corunna. When Sir John prepared to march, the most serious difficulties presented themselves. ”

“ But Lord Castlereagh seems to have either never known or wilfully forgotten the anterior political conduct of Saxony. Had he been more versed in German affairs, or had studied with more accuracy the events passing before his eyes, it would have been a check upon his arrogance; but here was a genuine disciple of the Pitt school (that school of ignorance and insolence) , who sets himself up as the moral regenerator of nations and as a distributor of provinces, while he is grossly ignorant of the political system of the country on whose destinies he pretends to decide so peremptorily. ”

“ Castlereagh, now marquess of Londonderry, was again to be the British representative, and he drew up for himself instructions that were handed over unaltered by Canning, his successor at the Foreign Office, to the new plenipotentiary, Wellington. In the threatened intervention of the continental powers in Spain, as in their earlier action towards Naples and Sardinia, England refused to take part. The Spanish revolutionary movement, Castlereagh wrote, “was a matter with which, in the opinion of the English cabinet, no foreign power had the smallest right to interfere.” ”

“ To carry an act of union with the rebellion hardly extinguished was a hard task, but to carry it by protestant votes as the precursor of an emancipation measure was harder still. First the Dublin bar, and then the citizens of Dublin generally, denounced any project of union; the Roman catholics were at best indifferent. But Castlereagh pressed vigorously on. He visited London, and laid his views before the ministry. Having regard to the aggressive policy of the French republic, Ireland, he argued, must be secured by an incorporating union, and that without the loss of a single session. ”

“ Castlereagh, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Member of his Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, Member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, Colonel of the Londonderry Regiment of Militia, and His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs ”

“ Buster shook his head sadly.
"Halas!" he observed in a melancholy tone. "That hole gladheateral spirit hof yourn his never horf tap. You h'are a blooming hole pugilist, that's wot you h'are. You horter be hashamed of yourself for wantin' to happropriate somebody else's private row."
Lord Castlereagh felt unjustly rebuked and retired to his favorite corner, apparently losing all interest in the hubbub, which continued below, growing gradually less noisy as though the cause were slowly departing from the immediate neighborhood. ”

“ But the true biography of a public man is to be found in his public career. There flattery can deceive no longer, and panegyric is brought to the test of posterity. It fell to the lot of Lord Castlereagh to take a lead in the four most memorable transactions of his time;—in the overthrow of the Irish Rebellion; in the establishment of the Union; in the downfall of the French empire; and in the settlement of the peace of Europe at the Congress of Vienna. ”